Wake Your Ghost
by Amatara
Summary: There's no reason why Danielle would even want to remember - or is there? Rousseau, Alex and Ben in the sideways 'verse.


**Author's Note: **Companion piece to Et In Arcadia Ego, supposing Ben stays around for a while after Alex 'wakes up'. The title is from a song by Kristin Hersh.

Feedback is loved, as always.

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**Wake Your Ghost**

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There is something to being a single mother that feels_ – _right, in a way. Fitting, for a reason she's never been able to articulate to herself, let alone to others. When she tries to, all the reply she ever gets is that Alex needs a father figure; that Robert, when he died, would not have wanted her to carry on alone. All she ever wants to answer is that Alex is doing just fine, and that, much as she loved him, Robert's opinion doesn't carry much weight since the day he decided to take his own life.

When people ask how she's doing, if she's seeing anyone, she just shrugs and tells them there is little to say. She dated in the past, sporadically, but never with conviction. The few times Alex tried to fix her up with someone – a teacher, a friend's divorced dad, once even a perfect stranger she'd seen in the street and tracked down with a twelve-year-old's iron perseverance – she made something of an effort, but in the end that, too, never went anywhere.

The truth is, it all felt like wasting time. Like every hour not spent with Alex was a lost one, an hour she didn't live at all. It was a feeling she questioned and marveled at in turns, even tried to fight on occasion, but it never passed. Not entirely. In the end, she just stopped wasting that time altogether.

She hasn't even missed it yet.

Some nights, pouring herself a brandy to take upstairs, she feels vaguely guilty anyway. Perhaps Alex would make friends more easily if she set a better example herself. She's working freelance as a translator, for two different companies, which means no time to socialize. In all fairness, she doesn't really mind. She's never been a 'people person' – not that she's ever liked that word, or thought it made any kind of sense. But for all her energy, Alex isn't quick to allow anyone into her heart, and she knows some of that is due to her.

There have been a few people, though. A boy Danielle has seen only once, picking up Alex at school to find her deep in conversation, all gestures and smiles and stars in her eyes. She was careful not to ask about it, or to mention the flush in Alex's cheeks. A flush she suspected had nothing to do with the cold and everything with what she just saw.

Then there's Alex's teacher, who seems a decent enough man. A little bland, maybe, but Alex looks up to him, calling him the smartest guy she knows _and _the nicest, so who is she to contradict that? Still, that night when Alex asks to have him over for dinner, pointing out his almost frail-looking shape on the curb, the rush of sympathy she feels seems just a little – _off_. But it stays with her throughout the evening, swelling whenever Alex laughs and basks in the attention, and it's only when he's left that something about it starts to feel wrong. Like her own heart just betrayed her.

Perhaps, she thinks, sipping her brandy in silence, she is no longer used to the company.

That weekend, she takes Alex dancing. It's pure impulse – possibly the most impulsive thing she's done in years – but Alex's grin when she asks is huge and real and more than a little stunned. She looks so pretty, her girl, in those plain black clothes that only a sixteen-year-old can wear and look amazing in. And for all Alex's teasing about her wearing heels and dresses at home, with no one there to see, there's no teasing when she wears them now.

Walking the streets together, Alex's arm hooked through hers, she can almost ignore that little voice inside her head – the one that keeps whispering time is running out.

She senses the change in Alex before she can see it. There's no obvious clue, nothing she can put her finger on, but the next time she comes back from history club, Danielle could swear she's been crying. She doesn't press; with Alex, that tends to have the opposite effect, and surely she'll talk when she's ready. Except Alex doesn't talk at all, which frightens her more than anything.

Next day is Wednesday, which is when Alex takes the bus from school. So she's not sure why she suddenly finds herself in the car to pick her up anyway. Arriving too early, of course – she's always too early – and it takes another ten minutes or so before she can see Alex walking up to the gate. Talking to Dr. Linus, which wouldn't be strange, except it looks less like a talk than an argument, Alex swiping at her eyes like she's crying again, then – she blinks, stunned – catching him by the hand to stop him from leaving.

The next second, she's out on the curb and is storming towards them, grabbing Alex by the arm just as he's pulling away.

"Alex – get into the car, _now._" She can barely hear her own voice over the rushing in her ears, and then she's pushing Alex along in front of her, putting every scrap of energy she has into _not _looking back at Linus or wondering why, as she met his eyes just now, he didn't look shocked or ashamed or angry at all. Simply – resigned. Like he just lost something precious.

She struggles with her seat belt, gives up and just stabs the key in the ignition. In the passenger's seat, Alex is staring down at her knees, biting her lip, face a blotchy reddish-pink.

"He didn't –" She trails off, tries again. "Alex, he wasn't trying to –"

"_No_!"Alex retorts, with a vehemence that brings her up short. "God, Mom – no, of course he didn't. He was just– " She sniffs and wipes her face on her sleeve, a gesture so _not _like the Alex she knows that she stares for a second. "I was just asking him to –"

"Alexandra." She swallows. "Whatever happened, you can tell me, and I promise that I'll –"

"You still don't know, don't you?" Alex says, in a tiny voice, and all she can do is shake her head because _no_, no, she doesn't understand at all. "I mean, I can't blame you, because…" Long pause, then, in one frantic breath, "You _need _to, Mom. I just – I feel like nothing's real anymore, and if you – if you only _remembered_, we could –"

"Alex," she interrupts, and suddenly there's that feeling again, the feeling that if she says another word it will all come crashing down. She ignores it, presses on, "What is it? The thing I need to remember? Tell me, Alex, please."

"All right." Unsteady breath. "All right, but I – I don't know –" Alex nods, weakly, lets out a little sigh that sounds almost like a sob. "Do you know what you said to me, just before – " Long pause, and then a hand slips down towards hers and squeezes it, tight. "You said that… on the count of three, we were going to –"

"_Run_," she breathes, the moment before Alex does.

Then, between one heartbeat and the next, she remembers it all.

The crash of the bullet, cold, then burning hot; wet grass under her cheek as her vision skewed to black.

Karl, dead before he hit the ground, Alex screaming in her arms.

Seeing Alex again at the radio tower, alive and healthy and _perfect, _just as perfect as that day sixteen years before, when they –

– when _he_ – took her away.

"Mom?" Alex asks, shakily, and then she's slamming down on the gas with all the strength she can muster. Pulling off the curb, she blocks out the screech of tyres and Alex's startled yelp, intent on just driving whatever distance she can. Not because she wants to, but to spare Alex the sight of what would happen if she'd stay.

She lurches into a parking spot two blocks ahead, squeezing the steering wheel until her hands turn white and she thinks she just might – _might _– begin to breathe again.

"Mom, it's okay," Alex says, voice high-pitched, unnatural. "It's okay, it was bad for me, too, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry –"

She shivers and cups Alex's face, the way she did when she was still a little girl, afraid of ghosts in the dark. Except the ghosts are different now, she thinks, numbly, stroking back those long dark curls so very much like her own. The ghosts are human, which only makes it worse.

"I cooked that man dinner," she mutters, bile rising in her throat. "I told him he was the closest thing my daughter had to a father, and he just stood there, acting like – like he_ cared_."

"He – you _did_?" Alex's head lifts.

She nods, untangling a hand from Alex's hair to ball it into a fist. "He's not getting near you again, I promise. He won't get the are taking you off that school, and then –"

"And then what?" Alex pulls back, eyes wild. "Mom, what can we –"

"We'll move, or –"

"But we're _dead!_" Alex's voice rises sharply, then falls flat. "We're gone, Mom, it's over, don't you see? This is _it_, our life, whatever we made of it anyway, and –"

"That man is _not_ our life," she snaps, shaking her head like it's not already too late, like everything isn't already falling apart around her. "That man _took _our lives, and I'm not letting him into whatever is left of them." She takes a breath, lets it out through clenched teeth. "I love you, Alexandra. We had a second chance to do this right, and I don't intend to – "

"But it was _my _life, Mom." Alex chokes back a sob. "Sure it wasn't much, but it was mine, and it was _real,_ and I can't just pretend it didn't happen, or that he – that he wasn't even _there_!"

She closes her eyes and puts her hands back on the steering wheel, telling herself it's not support that she needs it for, because this can't be happening. She's not losing her daughter to that man. Not in _this _lifetime, too, if there is any justice.

"What about us?" she asks, forcing calm, even though the fear in her chest is the fear of the jungle, mindless and wild. "The two of us, here – is that still real?"

"You're serious?" Alex makes a noise halfway between a hiccup and a sob. "You mean – like you working two jobs to pay the rent? Coq au vin night? Going _dancing _last Saturday? God, Mom, how can that _not_ be real?" A hand slides into hers, and then Alex whispers, "I just think – it's a different kind of real, you know? To show us that the _other _things are real too. Like you spending all those years looking for me, even though I didn't know, or…" Her voice cracks a little. "Or Ben not hating me, like… like I thought he did."

"Even if he was capable of becoming a good man, that doesn't change what he _was_,_" _she says, wearily, with a bitterness she doesn't quite then she isn't sure if that was a protest or an admission, or both.

"He said he's sorry," Alex pleads. "That counts for something, doesn't it? And if this is real, that includes _him_. If this _us _is real, so is this _him_, so –"

"So one word from him, and you simply – forgive everything he's done?"

"I don't know." Alex smiles faintly. "But – I _believe _him."

"Well, that _is_ a first, isn't it?" she mutters, stroking Alex's hand when she nods and feeling suddenly, inexplicably proud. Alex is right, she thinks. The only way out is through.

"Please, Mom," Alex says, shakily, but she's already started the car.

It makes no sense, knowing what they know, that the next morning would feel so much like the last one. But café-au-lait at breakfast still tastes like it used to, and the shower's hot tap is still stubbornly pouring lukewarm. The school gates open at eight sharp, same as always, a handful of students trickling past them as they pull into the parking lot. And Ben Linus arrives ten minutes later, parking his car in the same cramped little spot.

She told herself not to watch, but of course she does anyway, sunlight turning the scene into a stilted black-and-white. Alex running up to him, calling his name, the flood of relief in his face when she does. Relief that turns stale the moment Alex gestures for her to get out of the car.

She blinks and shields her eyes as she crosses the parking lot. She upended half the attic for her hiking boots last night, until Alex said she'd miss the heels if they were gone. But her shoes still sound hollow against the asphalt, like they belong to someone else.

"We should talk," she says, keeping the anger out of her voice but not the contempt.

"All right," he replies, slowly, face a guarded blank. "Though whatever conversation we're about to have – perhaps we should have it in private?"

"Or perhaps we should have it right here," she throws back, taking a step closer. "After all, it's not that this is truly a school… or Alex truly your student. Is it, _Doctor _Linus?"

If there's surprise in his eyes, it doesn't quite reach his face. "Well, I don't doubt to some of these people it still _is_, but… I concede your point." He tilts his head into a wary half-shrug.

"Alex hated you." That turns the shrug into a flinch, and she allows herself a dark satisfaction at the sight. "Yet she still wants to come down here and talk to you. What does that tell you?"

Pale eyes narrow, defiantly. "Why do I have a feeling it won't matter what I say?"

Her hand jerks up in what might have been a slap, if not for Alex gasping, "Dad, please –" Which makes it her turn to flinch. That, and he didn't even blink.

"Say it," she demands. "Give me one reason notto be _appalled_ when my daughter calls you that. One reason why I shouldn't simply –"

"Because I _was_," he bites back, in that harsh not-quite-drawl, that still manages to sound fragile even when it's not. "Because she's the only reason I'm still here. And –" He cuts himself off, fixes his eyes on the sky over Alex's head. "When you were five, you got out into the woods and decided to pick us some berries," he says, tone perfectly flat. "I spent thirty-six hours carrying you all across the house, because you refused to stay in bed but you were too sick to walk. You threw up all over me, twice. The second time, you laughed about it – like it was one hell of a joke. You remember?"

Alex swallows, nods silently.

"How about when you broke your wrist jumping off that swing? You were screaming so loud it brought the whole town running. Do you –"

"That's enough," Danielle cuts in, putting a hand on Alex's arm. "I think we've heard –"

"Oh, I think you haven't!" He pulls himself up. "I'll grant there's plenty of things you can blame me for. That I don't deserve her. That I was a terrible excuse for a parent. That I made the final years of my daughter's life hell. They'd all be true, but you have no business telling me I'm not Alex's father, or that I – didn't _care_," he pants, coming up for breath. "And if it makes any difference, I _am _sorry – for not doing a better job of it."

"How about for taking her?" she sneers, as much to cut off the apology as because she wants an answer.

"We both know she'd have died sooner if I didn't." And if her own voice was steel before, then so is his. There's a moment where all she wants is to take that steel and squeeze it till it gives, but then Alex stirs, and she reminds herself of why they're here.

"This is not for you," she breathes, resisting the temptation to ball her hands into fists. "I'm doing this for my daughter. Don't you doubt that." He blinks, for once having the decency to look stunned.

"I'll be fine, Mom," Alex says, and the determination in those eyes is the one she knows used to be in hers. "How about you?" Softly. "You really gonna look for –"

"Your father," she nods, with an effort. _The father I killed,_ that tiny voice reminds her, but she can't bring herself to say it, not yet. It's enough that she spent all night replaying that moment, of putting a bullet between his eyes. And if there's something in Linus's expression, an odd kind of gleam that seems too all-knowing, something tells her he's not going to spill.

"You will drop Alex off after school?" she asks, simply.

His jaw clenches.

And, yes, there's still doubt; there always is. But the hope in his face is too frail to be feigned, and that almost makes it bearable. That, and seeing the same hope in Alex's eyes.

The ghosts are just different, she thinks, as she goes to face her own.

.

.


End file.
